Open Source Delivers

I recently spoke at the Electronics and Automotive show in Gothenburg, Sweden, the headquarters of Volvo and many other vehicle companies.  While there is strong interest in using open source in cars and trucks – the impact it’s had in other industries like mobile is partly the catalyst (as I asserted in a previous post) [...]

Since 2002, Alcatel-Lucent has operated an intranet to educate employees about FOSS and to foster collaboration and decision-making.  This “best practice” is well worth emulating.  To learn more, I interviewed Alcatel-Lucent’s Michel Ruffin, PhD, who works as Software Coordination Manager in the Bell Labs Corporate CTO Department. Jim Berets:  Where did the idea for Alcatel-Lucent’s [...]

In my last post for Open Source Delivers, I discussed my visit to Nuremberg’s recent Enterprise Open Source Day event in February. In that post I mused about the similarities that might be found at Embedded World, one of Germany’s largest tradeshows. Although Embedded World is a much larger event, attracting companies from all over [...]

Despite all the snow that’s recently blanketed Germany, I was able to attend Enterprise Open Source Day in Nuremberg. Described by its organizers as an event for “open source enthusiasts and fans of the new, modern IT,” this year’s event focused on key trends including agile and mobile. These trends are of course not a [...]

Creating an open source software policy is a strategic imperative for organizations in the software industry.  But what does a strategic policy include, and how can you implement one? What is an OSS Management Policy? Let’s start by defining an open source management policy.  It is a set of rules and guidelines for using and [...]

So, your developers (hopefully using company-provided guidance) have found some FOSS that seems to fit the bill.   But, does it?  You’ll need to ask yourself the following questions: What are your criteria for good FOSS? How does it get downloaded and reviewed? How does my organization evaluate and approve FOSS components before they are included [...]

Talk to pretty much any corporate IP lawyer anywhere in the world and they will be able to articulate why it is important to put controls in place to govern the use of open source. I just completed a joint legal seminar in Tokyo with Mark Radcliffe of DLA Piper and, as expected, everyone was [...]

I’m often asked: “How should I manage open source at my company?”  The short answer I usually give (besides “You should manage it well!”) is that the management of open source should be holistic and systemic in the day-to-day cross-functional operations of your company.   In fact, this is the only real way to address all [...]

More likely than not, you, just like many of us at Black Duck, are focusing your efforts around the quality of the code written by your engineers, which is great… but it is not enough! Static code analysis has long been a well-recognized best practice in software engineering organizations. For us, reduced bug rates and [...]